In the aftermath of the deadly suicide attack in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. service members, the Biden administration ordered a drone hit on a car suspected of carrying a member of ISIS-K. It ended up killing a large family.
The BBC has reportedly confirmed that the tragic mistake killed ten members of one family, six of whom were kids.The oldest was 12-year-old Farzad; the youngest was a two-year-old girl named Sumaya.
“It’s wrong, it’s a brutal attack, and it’s happened based on wrong information,” Ramin Yousufi, a relative of the victims, cried tearfully. “Why have they killed our family? Our children? They are so burned out we cannot identify their bodies, their faces.”
CZ BBC confirming that Biden's uber-cool retaliatory strike apparently blew up a car full of innocent kids, not terrorists.https://t.co/c1BYdfP7KV
Terrible. Everything he touches turns to crap for us as a nation.
— The Gormogons (@Gormogons) August 30, 2021
American military bigwigs claimed there were “significant secondary explosions” after the drone strike, indicating there were explosives at the scene that may have harmed people nearby.
Another relative, Emal Ahmadi, claimed the two-year-old girl was his daughter. He also said he and others in the family had applied to be evacuated to the United States.
Related: Last U.S. Plane Leaves Kabul, All Military Personnel Are Out
Afghan reporter Ali Latifi reports that the family had been given special visas and were waiting for notification to proceed to the airport and evacuate.
Afghan journalist Ali Latifi @alibomaye tells me he went to the house where 10 family members including 6 children were killed by a US drone strike and that, tragically, they had been issued with special visas and were about to leave the country #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/WF2SDRLyAZ
— Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim) August 30, 2021
That included one of his relatives, Ahmad Naser, who was killed in the strike and had worked as a translator with U.S. forces. Other victims had previously worked for international organizations and held visas allowing them entry to the U.S.
Mr. Ahmadi added that the United States made “a mistake, it was a big mistake”.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the U.S. was “not in a position to dispute” the reports of the family being killed
“Make no mistake, no military on the face of the earth works harder to avoid civilian casualties than the United States’ military, and nobody wants to see innocent life taken” he said. “We take it very, very seriously and when we know that we have caused innocent life to be lost in the conduct of our operations, we’re transparent about it.”
The last United States evacuation plane is now in the air. Roughly 300 American are believed to still be in Afghanistan. There is a report that Americans were turned away from the airport by U.S. military forces before the final plane took off.
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